2013

2013 has to be the year of travel for me: i had been to the US of A four times: trice for work and once for holiday. in addition to that i also went to korea (4-day stopover back from hawaii), and also to new zealand.

little wonder, that i received my krisflyer elite gold membership! =)

other than that, life has been ok. not much major successes at work but not much setbacks either, i guess. seems like i will have to wait till 2014 for any change in my work environment and taskings. in any case, it does look like the end is getting closer and i am giving change a more serious thought.

sports-wise, i did some decent runs, particularly for the sundown marathon (did 1:45hrs for 25km), and AHM (1:30hrs). also cycled the entire ironman kona bike leg with only one bike training the week before to boot! haha.

time flies when you are having fun. see you in 2014!

the beginning of the end?

in an age of facebook, instagram, twitter and a gazillion other social-sharing platforms, i fear the end is near for la merde en direct.

with it possible for me now to insta-beam my thoughts and feelings to all my facebook friends (and get instant feedback to boot), i no longer find the need to constantly jot down my thoughts and blog only about them later on. in any case, i also find that there is no longer any need for me to write lengthy blogposts when people hardly have the patience to read more than 160 characters nowadays.

this is, as they say, the beginning of the end.

with increasingly heavier work schedules and other means of accessing the internet, my time at the iMac has decreased drastically. hence the reduced updates and articles.

unless there are no major happenings or updates, i should not be posting here anymore.. so long blogspot, and thanks for all the fish! =)

magneto

on a related note, i wonder why has a magneto-themed fridge magnet not yet been released??

5 room is better than EM

working in the army, i am also the housekeeper by default at home.

every week, i will do some area cleaning after running on saturdays - the chores are part of my extended workout. i do not do much, just simple sweeping and mopping of the floor and other miscellaneous items.

but even then, those two things alone can already add up to be quite a bitch. only after you have mopped the floor using just a cloth and your bare hands, can you appreciate the largeness of your apartment.

these are times when i appreciate my relative poverty at not being able to afford a EM. imagine mopping the stairs! well done with level 1 - now go on to level 2; how do you even clean the ceiling?

 sometimes, less is better than more. =)

gong hei fatt choy!!!

gong hei fatt choy!!! not quite into the new year yet, but its already turning out to be quite an expensive year - this year is the first year that we are handing out angpows, and those little buggers don't come cheap.

give too little, and you are labelled a miser.
give too much, and you have to survive on bread and water for the rest of the month.

just like at weddings, angpow giving is indeed an art!

---

here's to an advance happy year of the snake!!! this year, we should embody the spirit of the zodiac animal of the year and eat more snake, draw snake add leg (please, the dragon is so passé already), or sell snake oil. Huat ah!!! =D

compare and contrast

drink driving + killing a pedestrian + injuring 2 others = S$9,500 fine and banned from driving for three years.

wanting to own a car for transportation to work + fetch kids to school + ferry wife and aged parents around = S$92,100 fine.

uniquely singapore indeed.

happy new year

pull your ear!

2012

2012: the year of the renovation and the wedding.

needless to say, this was a very busy year for me. most of my weekends in the first three-quarters of the year were spent on conducting market surveys for household items, coordinating my renovation, and chasing bo-chup contractors. and then there was the wedding too. more countless evenings of prop making, dance rehearsals and table arranging. heh. then there was work too. 2012 had turned out to be quite a good year for me professionally. i have spent about a year+ at my new job and have grown into my appointment after some struggles initially. indeed, i have expanded my horizons and learnt a lot this year. went to the states too, for my first overseas conference. to cap it all off, i also managed to obtain my ippt gold again! unfortunately, things were pretty dismal again on the automotive front, as i got into yet another accident. phroar! why do singaporean drivers love to jam brake so much? for sports, i was glad to have won the uphill run in oct; this means that i am concurrently holding on to both uphill run and x-country titles. =)


2013 will be a transitional year, as i take some time off to consolidate the past 28 years of my life, and figure out what i would like the next 28 years to be like.

save the day!

D-8

i always get the flutters before an important race; the shorter/ intense the race, the worse the feeling.

anyhow, it had been quite fun getting to this stage. all the morning hill intervals, sharing of running techniques and morning breakfasts. great to know that some of us in camp do actually love running.

on the other hand, there is also the persistent silence from the select few and race attire procurement process that puts its leopard tank counterpart to shame.

oh wells, time to just forget everything and focus on that 15 minutes tomorrow.

up the hill, down the slope.
up the slope, down the hill.
any sweat?
no sweat chicken feed haha all the way!!! 

=)

life

is what happens when you are busy planning away.

minefield

been walking into minefields lately.

not sure why, but i think i have very bad synthesis, persuasion and communication skills, and am also very bad at reading body languages. in sum, i am quite the bumbling bull in a china shop when it comes to meetings or project reviews.

i mean, just this evening, i came out of a meeting with my boss, and both of us had different interpretations of what the chairman wanted! to set the record straight, although i wasn't that too far off the mark, but when it comes to urgent project demands, misreading a "should do" from a "must do" could lead to disastrous results!

damn.. i seriously need to get a WLR soon. =\

le Pothaus

IT IS DONE!!! =D

favourites

i have a favourite car, its the volvo v50.
i have a favourite type of beer too: IPA.
for brands, my favourites would be casual-preppy labels such as nike, a&f and lacoste.

given the number of products and brands in the world, it is inevitable that all of us will have our preferences and favourites. amongst people, it is the same thing. have you ever felt supremely comfortable with this particular group or person? have you ever heard of the term bff?

but that's only one side of the story. newton third law states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. so for every blue eyed boy, there is also the sway kia who kena anything and everything just because he is nobody's child.

sometimes i do feel like i'm the latter. but that drives me on to work harder and faster to prove myself. afterall, life wouldn't be that interesting if it were so smooth sailing right? =)

when september ends II

as usual, i just feel like singing that green day song, "wake me up, when september ends.." because somehow, september has never been a good month for me.

have been so swarmed at work recently!!! guess i got more than what i bargained for.. *dang* (>_<)"

anyhow, it seems like the pothaus should be done by mid-sep, so i guess we should be moving in by october!!! *hooray* remember to wake me up when september ends!!! =)

ndr2012

lots of quotable quotes in this year's rally:

1. "... we are a small island, but we cannot afford be small minded."
2. "... do not be a one-eyed dragon..."
3. "we may be very conscious of our shortcomings, but others have a high regard for what we have achieved." *excuses!!!*
4. "...individually, the memories are life's experiences, but collectively, they are about the soul of the nation..." *so why the rapid pace of industralisation?*
5. "...3 words: hope, heart, home."

in any case, i thought that it was quite a well-delivered speech; one that i enjoyed listening to at least, for the past few years. there was much more reference to what had been happening on the ground, instead of pursuing the government's own agenda, and as a result, it seemed like there was not one segment of society that was left out by PM lee in his speech.

now if you would excuse me, i need to go and stand up for singapore.. =D

reno woes

sorry for the lack of updates, but we have been busy for the past few weeks navigating the home renovation and décor landscape in singapore - everything just seems so nice yet so expensive at the same time!

indeed, projet pothaus has been a project like no other project that i have handled before. whereas my other projects involve of sums running into the millions, projet pothaus is the first project that i have done involving my own hard-earned money. and therein lies the fundamental conflict of wanting everything in the fastest time at the lowest cost.

performance, schedule, cost. as they say, you can only choose 2 out of 3.

if it is good and fast, it will not be cheap.
if it is good and cheap, then production will take some time.
if it is fast and cheap, quality will definitely be dubious.

can't wait for all of this to be over. don't get me wrong; the process is somewhat enjoyable seeing your concepts or designs being turned into reality, but renovation is really stressful, especially if you have a full time job yet want to be as hands-on as possible during the renovation process like me. of course, seeing your slowly depleting bank account is not exactly most encouraging either.

oh wells, at least we'll be done soon!!! after about 4 months of hacking, painting, drilling, puttying, cabling, fixing and screwing (not me), its about time, isn't it? =)

in the zone

where i aim to be at every night. =)

london 2012

with the already bursting-at-the-seams competition calendar for almost every sport, are the olympics even relevant today?

倒霉

argh another series of unfortunate events. seems like i can only choose 2 out of 3 at any one time: personal life, work and sports.

if my personal life and work is doing well, then my tennis would suck, or i would get some running injury.
if all is fine for my personal life and i'm hitting like nadal, then work would be terrible.
if work and sports are fantastic, well you get the idea.

any tips on how to improve my luck? *grahz*